Susan had flung from her with both hands the imprudent longing to cry out her story.
Somehow she felt that if she spoke now she would be a traitor. It was too late to look back; for good or ill she had changed places with the other woman who would not come. To fail now would not be to clear her honour, it would be to desert her post.
When Lady Henrietta, having triumphed, had given way at last, and had clung to Susan, the girl, gathered in that fierce clasp, had known that Barnaby's mother took passionate comfort in her only because the stranger was something that had belonged to him. To deny her that comfort would be to rob one who had nothing left. Could she, by a wistful life of devotion, justify herself, not in the sight of man, not to hard judges—but perhaps to this Barnaby who was dead, and who would surely understand? Keeping silent, she promised him that she would.
Day after day passed over her head, building an unsteady wall between her and that pitiless outside world in which she had been like a driven leaf, without hope or foothold. She became accustomed to the lazy peace of the house, to the watchful offices of the old servants, who seemed, like Lady Henrietta herself, curiously proud of her.
Slowly she grew stronger; her thin cheek rounded, still pale, but touched with a faint promise of colour.
One afternoon she was taking her solitary walk in the park, and had wandered farther than she had been. The dogs had left her, scurrying after rabbits, and she leaned on a stile that offered a resting-place, a little tired and wistful, gazing at the sinking fire in the west.
Suddenly the air was quick with galloping, and all around her were jumping horses. Startled, but unafraid, she watched them coming over the hedge, imagining that as they came they would vanish.
"You shouldn't stay there, you might get hurt," called someone, pulling up at her side. "How are you?"
She had been looking on, as one would look at a gallant picture, not realizing that she was in its midst. Instinctively she drew back. All had stopped, and hounds were clustering in the bottom, where the huntsman had dismounted, and was peering into a drain. Many heads were turned, with a rough kindness that excused curiosity, in her direction. Perhaps they were all Barnaby's comrades, who missed him, and saw in the pathetic figure one who was missing him more than they...
But the man who had drawn up beside her was leaning down to her like an old friend, barring out the rest with his shoulder. His horse, still excited, jerked at his bit, and flung a white flick of lather on her black dress. Without thinking, she stretched out her hand to his muzzle.
"Take care. He's an uncertain brute," said Rackham. "You like horses?"
"I used to ride," she said.
Something awoke in her at that velvet touch, and she could not finish, thinking of other horses.
"Good," he said quickly. "Tell you what. I have a mare that would carry you. I'll come and talk it over—if my aunt will let me in."
He laughed a little under his breath at that. "How do you get on with her?" he asked. "She'sa warrior—!"
Susan lifted her eyes to his face. His abrupt friendliness could not entirely conquer the fluttering apprehension of danger in his good-nature that made her unaccountably shy of him. There was commiseration in his look—and admiration.
"Look here," he said; "we're cousins—by marriage. I've some warrant to be officious—and you're alone in a strange land, aren't you?—and all that."
Was it her imagination, or did he drop his voice significantly? Perhaps he was glancing at their first meeting, pitying her as a reed bruised in Lady Henrietta's warlike hands. Perhaps—no, she could not read his expression.
The huntsman straightened his back, and walked stiffly towards his horse. A man who was giving up passed by and gravely took off his hat; she watched him hooking with his whip at the bridle gate. She was afraid that they would all ride off and leave her with Barnaby's kinsman, and his penetrating smile.
"Anyhow," said Rackham, "I'm here if you want backing.... Just let me know if you need any kind of help."
A scream on the hidden side of the spinney beneath them linked up the field, believing in one of the glorious surprises that light up the dragging end of the day. The huntsman pushed right through the misty tangle, calling on his hounds, and the riders disappeared like a swirling river. A minute and they were gone.
The girl listened breathlessly to the thudding of distant hoofs. Her heart beat a little too fast, disturbed by that brief interlude of excitement. She stood quite still until the last gleam of scarlet faded, and the galloping died away, leaving a tremendous quiet. There was no sound at last but the wildfowl, far away on the lake, beginning their sunset chaunt.
Half the household had rushed out to look for hounds, and were returning singly, more or less out of breath, as the girl came home. It was astonishing what a commotion the hunt, in its passing, had awakened in that sad household. Lady Henrietta herself, with a shawl on her head, was in the garden, peering. Her sporting instincts were struggling in her with a kind of rage.
"Tell me who were out," she said. "Oh, of course you can't. Buttheywould know who you are. I am glad they saw you. It would remind some of them—a man is so soon forgotten! To think of them all hunting and fooling just as they used; with him left out—! Did they run from Tilton? I don't suppose a man of them wasted a thought on him till they saw you there. Did they change foxes, Susan?"
She talked on eagerly, answering herself with conjecture as she hurried the girl into the warm house, out of the gathering rain. Macdonald, the butler, was better informed than she, and his mistress seized on him as he slipped in, wiping his brow, short-winded but triumphant. He it was who had holloaed the fox away.
"Come here and tell me all about it," said Lady Henrietta sharply. "—At your age, Macdonald—!"
He approached with solemnity, remembering his dignity, and his rheumatism, an inextinguishable light in his eye.
"They ran from Owston, my lady, and lost the fox on yon side of our bottom spinney. He must have been about done, by the way scent failed, and they couldn't pick him up again for the gentlemen crowding forrard. No, my lady, there was two sticks crossed in the earth—and the drainpipe clogged. But we found 'em one that'll take them a sight farther than some of them care to go. A real fine fox that was!" He wound up with real pride.
"And who was that on the bay?" asked Lady Henrietta. "He took the fence well, Macdonald."
"That was his Lordship," allowed Macdonald, but grudgingly. "Ah, my lady, I seen Mr. Barnaby take that very jump that day they killed their fox in the park. Clean and fine he went up, and lighted; he never smashed no top rail!"
"I know—I know," said Lady Henrietta. "The day he put out his shoulder."
"That was a rabbit hole," said Macdonald jealously. "Ah, my lady, his Lordship will never go like him!"
Dismissing Rackham with the scorn of an old servant staunch to his master, he shook his head mournfully and retreated. Lady Henrietta had turned abruptly from her cross-examination, and held out her hands to the fire.
The incident, slight as it was, and brief, coloured all their evening. Afterwards, Lady Henrietta returned to the subject, amusing herself with surmises. Had Susan noticed a man with a grizzled moustache and a furtive eye?—and another who had a trick of jerking out his elbow?—and one who rode like a jack-in-the-box, starting up continually in his stirrups? And had she seen a woman in brown, who usually backed in under the hedge at a check, talking secrets with a lank man, her shadow,—and all unwitting that there were two sides to hedges, and that voices filtered through? Insensibly, she branched into reminiscence, telling caustic histories of these Leicestershire unworthies, who were all unknown to Susan; and the girl hardly listened, sitting with her cheek on her hand and a dreaming brow.
The short interlude had impressed her. But in imagination she saw, not the splendid figure that had crashed over the hedge down yonder,—but another, one silently haunting the dim pastures where he had ridden once, sweeping out of the dusk, and passing into the dusk again. The swift scene came back to her, with its wild rush of life, hounds, and horsemen,—only, instead of his cousin, she pictured Barnaby, to whose memory she had dedicated herself.
It was wearing late. Soon Lady Henrietta would interrupt herself, breaking off with a remorseful brusqueness, and order her off to bed. How quiet it was in the library, that vast, comfortable room! How safe she felt, and how sleepy, only dreaming, not thinking of anything.
The white fox-terrier with the bitten ear had stolen down to her and lay on her skirt. There was a kind of fellowship between her and the dog. When it jumped up all at once with a shiver she stroked its back softly, wondering why it alone was excited by the wind whistling outside the house. And it looked up in her face and scuttled like a thing possessed down the room.
"What's the matter with Kit?" said Lady Henrietta, pausing.—"I daresay she heard Macdonald shutting up in the hall."—And she went on talking.
Far down the room the heavy curtain swung hastily, and fell back. It was Susan who, without warning, lifted her eyes and saw somebody standing there.
He had walked right in out of the wind and rain, had flung off his dripping cap, but had not waited to unbutton his greatcoat; and he looked as he had looked in his picture, but no ghost—real,—with dreadful blue eyes, and a smiling mouth.
The girl started to her feet. One wild moment she stared at him. Her own cry sounded strange in her ears, very far off ... and then the world went round.
*****
Slowly she drifted back into consciousness, and she was lying on her bed, surrounded by fluttered women, whose amazed whispering reached her like the dim clamour in a dream.
"Poor thing; poor thing—it was too much for her." "It was wicked of Mr. Barnaby to startle her like that. But how like him——!"
"Lord, Lord! his face as she lay on the floor!—and his mother rating him as if he'd never been dead an hour——!"
"'You've killed her!' said she. 'You've killed her!'"
"Like as not she'll go out of her mind, poor lamb!"
The quavering excitement hushed suddenly as she stirred.
"Hold your noise, you!" the old housekeeper adjured the others, pushing them on one side, and patting her anxiously, promising something in a voice that shook, tremulous and coaxing,—as one might dangle the moon to quiet a frantic child.
Up the long corridor came a man's step, and the pattering of a dog. The housekeeper jumped, and ran from the bedside, and the maids clung hysterically together, looking with a scared eagerness at the door. A superstitious terror was still painted on their faces.
Barnaby was not dead. The whole dreadful comedy was scarcely clear to the girl, so dizzy was she with this one miracle, the thing that was impossible, and was true. Shame had not yet burnt up wonder. She lay motionless, with her hands on her heart, listening to his step, and waiting for the sound of a voice that she had never heard.
"How is she?"
Oh strange, kind voice, asking that! Susan caught her breath, remembering who she was not.
The housekeeper, running out, had closed the door nervously, and was posted with her back against it, half in a rapture, and half reproachful.
"Oh, Mr. Barnaby—! Oh, my gracious!"
Collecting herself, she went on in a trembling hurry.
"She's come round at last; she's come to herself;—but the doctor says we must keep her quiet. You can't come in, sir! It might do harm. He said so before he went to my lady.... I daren't let you in, Mr. Barnaby.... Please! ... I've told her you'll come to her in the morning ... and I was to give you her love."
The girl started up, horror-stricken, and fell back on the bed, covering her face. Would nothing silence that foolish tongue, inspired by its ill-judged haste to pacify the presumed impatience of the man who had done the mischief? Through the guarded door, through her shut eyes, Susan had a scorching vision of Barnaby, the stranger, listening to that brazen message. And between her convulsive fingers she heard the old servant babbling on.... No, after that, she could not bear to look him in the face!
Panic seized her. It grew upon her as she lay quiescent, enduring the ministrations of sympathizers who would have scorned to touch her if they had known. Barnaby had not spoken. He had not said to them, "She is an impostor." He was letting them pity her, handle her gently ... till to-morrow.
They had given her something to make her sleep, but the draught was impotent; instead of soothing, it was exciting a strange confusion in her head. She got out of bed at last, hearing nothing but somewhere in her room the heavy breathing of a dozing watcher. Slowly at first, and then quicker, as the impulse took hold of her, she began struggling into her clothes. She must go, she must go; she could not stay in this house.
Driven by her panic, that could not think, could not reason, she set her desperate foot on the stair.
The lights were not out in the hall below; they shimmered faintly as she passed like a shadow towards the door. If someone should come—! Feverishly she tried to undo the bar; the latch was very heavy. Her heart beat so loud that she was deaf to all other noises.
She did not know that she was not alone till a hand was laid on her shoulder.
She turned round, shaking from head to foot, leaning against the door.
"Oh, let me go!" she cried.
He looked at her gravely.
"I'm afraid we're neither of us real," he said. "Let's try not to scare each other.... They tell me that you're my widow."
She turned her face from him.
"Don't look at me. Oh, don't look at me! Let me go," she repeated wildly.
His fingers closed over hers, still fumbling at the bar.
"I don't think I can do that," he said. "The doctor blames me for frightening you out of your life. He'd hold me responsible if I let you rush out of my house in the middle of the night like this. If you don't mind I'll ask you not to make me out a worse fool than I've been already. And—you aren't going to faint again, are you? Sit down a minute——"
His arm went round her quickly; he had unloosed her hands from the door, and put her into a chair by the fire, before she was sure that she had not fainted. She leant her whirling head against the packed red cushions.
"They gave me something to make me sleep...." she murmured.
He stood a little way off on the hearthrug, watching her. Kit, the terrier, lay down suddenly between them, as if it had him safe.
"How did you know me?" he said abruptly.
"There is a picture of you," she said; "and I—thought of you so often."
The man who had been dismissed so lightly from his world looked down with a queer expression. He could not doubt the utter unconsciousness in the tired young voice. She had nothing to hope for. She was being judged.
"In the name of Heaven, why——?" he burst out, checking himself too late for, the girl stood up and faced him, calling up all her courage.
"Because I am a shameless wretch," she cried unsteadily. "A liar and an impostor.... You don't ask a thief why he has robbed you. You send him to prison.... You don't laugh at him...."
"You child!" said Barnaby.
The strange, kind note in his voice broke down her desperation. Somehow, she found herself stammering out the story of her Southern childhood; the brave old family ruined by the war; the last of them dying, the last friend gone, and she left undefended, to fight for herself in the world. Not strong enough to nurse the sick, not hard enough to win her way in business; driven to try if she could live by her one poor gift of acting;—what could she do but catch at the happy-go-lucky kindness that had flung salvation to her?
"I could have died..." she said, scorning herself; "but I ... came."
"Hush!" said the man softly, all at once, turning round to meet interruption. The doctor was coming downstairs, deliberately, as became an all-wise and elderly dictator, peering short-sightedly into the hall below.
"Bless my soul!" he said. "Barnaby, you villain, she's not fit to be talking to you. I warned the servants it was as much as their lives were worth to let you go near her;—and look at this!"
He shook his head at them both, but relented, with his fingers on Susan's pulse. His professional knowledge of woman mitigated his surprise at her quick recovery. Some women could bear anything, after the first shock of pain or joy.
"Good," he said. "Since you're awake, and in your right mind, which I had hardly dared to hope for,—I'll send you up to Lady Henrietta. She has been calling for you. Just sit beside her, and tell her very quietly, over and over again, how Barnaby looks, and all that. I can't risk her seeing him yet;—her age isn't so elastic,—and nothing will satisfy her but you."
Instinctively the girl moved to obey, and stopped. Would Barnaby let her go to his mother? As far as she could understand—it was still stranger than a dream—he had not yet proclaimed her an impostor. But surely the time was come.
"Oh," said the doctor, following her look; "your husband must do without you."
And then Barnaby spoke.
"You're a bit hard on us, doctor," he said. "We had a lot to say to each other. But my wife and I can finish our talk to-morrow."—His voice, as he turned to her, lost its humorous note and became grave. "Go up to my mother,—please."
She went. The doctor watched her go, and, shaking off a certain perplexity, addressed himself to the younger man. Old friend of the family that he was, his gruff manner poorly hid his emotion.
"Good heavens, man!" he said. "I can't get accustomed to you. Shake hands again, will you? I want to feel positive you are not a spook."
"What about my mother?" asked Barnaby. He too had been watching the girl go slowly up the stairs.
"She'll be all right, if we can keep her quiet," said the doctor cheerfully. "But she can't afford to have any more shocks. Her heart is bad. You didn't know that, of course. She is a courageous lady, and has taken all your vagaries gallantly up to now, but this has been a bit too sudden. If it hadn't been for your wife's collapse distracting her attention for the moment, taking her mind off the greater shock——"
He broke off there.
"How the devil was I to know?" burst out the other man. "I had no notion that I was dead."
"Hadn't you heard——?"
"How should I? Look here, doctor, I haven't been sulking in civilization; racketing in cities. I've been roughing it, going up and down in the earth.—There wasn't much use in writing letters. I told my mother I would turn up again some day, and she wasn't to be surprised. I did send her a line, now and then, the last of them a greasy scrawl in a mining camp, where there was one bit of paper among the lot of us, and I won it. She can't have got that.... When I had worked the restlessness out of my blood—some fellows can't manage that, it takes them all their lives—I had a fancy to come home and walk into the old place as if I had never left it.... It's simple enough——!"
He was bending forward, stammering a little in his excitement. Suddenly he laughed.
"By George!" he said. "So that was why the porters fled from me at John o' Gaunt!"
The old man surveyed him anxiously, wiping his glasses.
Often one heard of men who, seized by a thirst for adventure in the rough, or unbalanced by passion and disappointment, had thrown up everything familiar and dropped out, to savour the hard realities of life. Sometimes they reappeared, sometimes only peculiar stories drifted to their old set about them, and those who might know were dumb. He felt a most irrational alarm, an impulse to hold fast to this prodigal.
"You'll not vanish again?" he said hastily. "You won't want to roam in search of adventures now you have a wife to take care of."
Barnaby stretched out for a cigarette and lit it. There had always been a box of them in one corner of the chimney-piece. It did not strike him as odd that he should find them there.
"Have a smoke, doctor," he said. "It'll steady your nerves a bit.... Yes, I'm sobered."
He halted a minute, and the terrier at his feet, remembering an old trick he had taught her, sprang up and blew out the match. As he stooped to caress her, she began licking him furiously. There had been some other trick, but she had forgotten that. She made a clumsy effort to keep his attention by crossing her paws and waving them, which was how it had begun....
"Good dog," he said, and she dropped at his feet, proud of her cleverness, though grudging his notice to the doctor.
"You're right there," he went on, as if the thought amused him. "A man is a fool to go tramping over the world, searching for adventures, when they come to him on his own hearth."
*****
Lady Henrietta lay propped high with pillows, talking fast.
"I want Susan!" she complained. "Bring me Susan. The doctor shan't put me off with his opiates. I can't trust any of you but Susan."
And the girl came faltering into the room.
Lady Henrietta caught her hand, nipping it tight in hers.
"Susan, my child," she said. "What a little cold hand you've got! They're hushing me as if I was a lunatic, humouring me with tales. And my heart's so funny. I can feel it misbehaving.... I'll die if they make me angry. Come here, closer. I want to ask you—youwon't tell me comfortable lies.—Has Barnaby come back?"
"He has come back," said Susan.
"Are you deceiving me?" whispered Lady Henrietta. "Are you in league with the doctor?—I sent old Dawson out there, you know, and he said the report was true.... He saw the boy's grave. He put up a stone.... And the lawyers came croaking together like ravens, and swore there wasn't a scrap of doubt.... And Rackham stepped into his shoes, and I made them search for you high and low!—Oh! no, it's not true! I am wandering in my mind. Look at me. You and I couldn't cheat each other. Let me see it in your face!"
But Susan could not. She dropped her head over the hand clasping hers so fiercely, and her unstrung nerves gave way; she could not keep from sobbing.
Strangely enough, her crying seemed to soothe Lady Henrietta.
"Ah, you never used to cry like that!" she said. "He has come." She stroked the girl's hair with her other hand.
"I suppose they'll let me see him in the morning," she said rationally. "He will be asleep now, poor boy. He shall come up to me when he has had his breakfast, and pour out his ridiculous adventures. They must give him devilled bacon. Margaret, Margaret, stop snivelling, and remind them to give him devilled bacon. Keep holding my hand, Susan, and don't cry so. We have got him back."
The dim light was already struggling in through the curtains before Lady Henrietta dropped off to sleep, quieted. Susan dared not withdraw her hand. Her arm grew stiff, ached awhile, and was numb; her head slid against the pillow, and her eyes shut at last.
She awakened with a start to hear Lady Henrietta's laugh, weak but natural, and a man's exclamation, sharp and pitiful, above her.
"Take her away, Barnaby, and give her her breakfast," his mother was ordering. "Didn't you see her? The poor child has been sitting up holding my hand like that the livelong night. I was clean off my head.... I might have known you'd behave like this. Oh, I can bear the sight of you now; don't be nervous; I'm not one of those sentimental mothers—! But since I've taken to heart attacks I have to be treated with circumspection"—she desisted a minute in her rapid effort to disguise emotion:—"Barnaby, I am obliged to you for—forher."
"You're fond of her, are you, mother?" said Barnaby.
Lady Henrietta laughed at him, amused at his queer intonation.
"Fond?" she cried. "I adore her. The first minute I saw her, a little pale wisp in her widow's weeds, I adored her. She isn't your style at all, you puzzle. You used to admire a more lavish figure.... I can't understand it in the least; but I'm thankful. And that reminds me you must take her up to London immediately, and have her put into proper clothes."
"Oh, I say——" Barnaby was beginning. She took the words out of his mouth.
"Yes, it's your business," she said. "We can't have her going about in black; it denies your existence—! and you look like a battered scamp yourself. You'll have to go to your tailor. If you want any money I'll write you a cheque.... They won't honour yours while you're dead.... Wake her up now, and take her away to breakfast—and take care of her if you can!"
He bent down and touched her arm, and she lifted her head, still dazed, and stood up from her cramped position.
"Run away," said Lady Henrietta. "Run away, you two. I am going to wash my face."
She kissed her hand to them as they went through the door, and, in spite of herself, her lip quivered. She lay quite still for a minute, raging at herself.
"Quiet!" she muttered. "Quiet! It's nothing to die about, stupid heart!"
Downstairs the servants were all hovering, lying in wait, and watching for a glimpse of the master. Macdonald himself had drawn two arm-chairs beside a small table by the fire, and unwillingly, but discreetly, took himself off and closed the door behind him.
"Sit down," said Barnaby gently. "I'll pour out your tea. You must want it."
She let him do as he would, accepting her cup at his hands, drinking obediently, trying to eat; patient, but not at all understanding him. The winter sun streamed in red, shining in her hair, making lights in its curling darkness; it even lent a fictitious pink to her cheek as she sat, so soberly, facing the man in whose house she was, whose ring was on her finger. When she turned her head a little the glimmer died. Irrelevantly—why should the thing strike him then?—he likened her paleness to the creamy tint of the hawthorn blossom, warm, and smoother than the wintry white of the sloe. She had been ill, too; she was very fragile.
All the while she dared hardly glance at him, though she knew that he was regarding her, not with the righteous wrath of a swindled Briton whose house was his castle, but with a strange expression that, less comprehensible, was little less alarming. The situation seemed to amuse him.... And it was like a scene in a play; intimate, domestic, and yet unreal. They were obliged to sit so close at the confidential little table, with its clinking china, and its neighbouring row of silver dishes keeping warm in the fender.... She had a wild fancy that if she thrust her hand in that fire that leapt and crackled so naturally it would not burn.
"Well," he said suddenly. "What's to be done?"
He had risen and come round to her side; the little delay was over. They had finished breakfast....
"I don't know," she said. "I am at your mercy."
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
His matter-of-fact politeness, as he waited with the cigarette unlit between his fingers, provoked in her a fugitive smile.
"There!" he said. "You are beginning to see the funny side of it too, as I do. A man who has knocked about the world as I have doesn't bluster like a Pharisee and a brute, unless he is mad,—or angry. What on earth could I do to you?"
"Are you not—angry?" she asked faintly.
"Not exactly," said Barnaby. "I am rather astonished at your pluck. Of course, it was frightfully dangerous, and you have got us both into a hole.—I'm not going to preach at you——"
He hesitated a little.
"You know," he said. "I'm an awfully prudent chap, but once or twice in my life I have lost my head. When I went to America three years ago, I was only fit to be clapped into a strait-waistcoat. Of course, I did the first mad thing that came into my head."
There was a touch of some old bitterness in his voice then, and a sort of retrospective contempt.
"It's a grim fact, that," he said. "It can't be got over. I don't know what possessed me;—but therewasa marriage."
"She is very beautiful," said Susan, uttering her own wandering thought. She did not know why.
"Who?" said Barnaby. "Oh,—yes. She was like somebody I knew."
There was silence between them. Then the man laughed.
"It was one of those unaccountable acts of temporary madness," he said. "We're all guilty of such at times. Did she tell you why we fell out? How she mistook me for a sort of prince in disguise, and turned on me afterwards, as furious as I was—disillusioned? Don't let's talk about that. We have our own problem to consider."
"Yes," said the girl, catching her breath.
"I am afraid," he said gravely, "we must keep it up for a bit."
"I—don't—understand," she said.
"It's the only thing to do," he said. "Look at it fairly. Since the lady who married me sent you over as her substitute, she can't complain if I should acknowledge you as my wife. It injures nobody.—Don't mistake me!"
For the girl had sprung to her feet, and was gazing at him with horror in her eyes.
"Wait!" he said. "I'm not one of these talking fellows.—Perhaps I'm not putting it clearly. As far as I can make out, the doctor believes another shock on the top of this one might possibly kill my mother. She's not to be worried or contradicted. I can't go to her and tell her, 'That girl you are so fond of is an impostor. I've turned her out of the house,' seriously, how could I? And do you imagine she'd be contented with any excuse I could make to her for your disappearance? I can't risk it. You wouldn't want me to risk it. Come, you owe her a little consideration——!"
"Oh—!" she cried. "Yes"—but still she trembled.
Barnaby smiled down on her encouragingly. Apparently,—after that one quick word that had hushed her outcry,—he was unconscious of misconstruction.
"Besides," he said, "there will be row enough in the papers over my reappearance. I couldn't stand them getting hold of this. Good Lord! It would make us a laughing-stock."
"I am—sorry," she said, in a broken voice. Barnaby dropped his own.
"Don't be sorry," he said. "Be a brave girl, and let's keep it to ourselves."
Her heart jumped and stood still. She looked at him like some wild thing caught in a trap, without hope or help, crying its uttermost defiance.
And the man understood. His eyes looked straight into hers, blue and earnest, no longer careless.
"If I trust you," he said, "you must trust my honour. Please understand that I am a gentleman. We'll play our farce to stalls and the gallery, and when the curtain is down we'll treat each other with the most profound respect."
She tried to speak and could not. His voice softened.
"There's nothing else to be done," he said. "It won't be so hard on you;—you're an actress. And we'll find a way out, somehow. Perhaps, in a month or two, I can manage to have important business in America——"
She caught at that.
"And take me with you and drop me somewhere—?" she suggested.
"Take you with me and drop you somewhere?" he repeated. "Exactly. We must think it over."
"I could get killed in a railway accident—anything!" she said, in an eager, breathless voice.
"How accommodating!" said Barnaby. "There, that's settled. To my mother, and all outsiders, we'll be the most ordinary couple; but in private it shall be Sir and Madam. Shake hands on it, and promise me you'll play up."
He took her hands, the one with his ring on, the other bare. And Susan looked up at him, and was not afraid any more. She felt safe, and yet reckless;—almost as if she did not care at all how it ended, as if nothing were too dangerous, too adventurous for her to promise him.
"Right," he said. "And it's comedy, not tragedy, we're playing. We mustn't forget that."
"No," she said uncertainly; but she was not so sure.
"And now I'm going round to the stables," he said, changing his tone. But he turned back again on his way to the door.
"What am I to call you?" he asked. "The other lady had a string of fine-sounding names. Which of them do you go by?"
She coloured. His question smote her with the strangeness of their compact.
"Only one," she said, "and that was my own. I asked your mother to call me Susan."
"Susan," he said to himself. "Susan ... I'll remember."
She took one impetuous step towards him as he was going out.
"How good you are to me," she cried unsteadily. "Oh, how good you are!"
But Barnaby shook his head.
"Poor child," he said briefly. "I hope you'll always think I was good to you."
And he went out of the house whistling to himself.
*****
"What shocking writing!" said Lady Henrietta, "and how blotted! Who's your illiterate correspondent?"
Barnaby had stuffed his letter into his breast-pocket as he walked across the room.
"Julia," he said shortly.
As if upon second thoughts, he felt for it again, pulled it out, and tossed it into the fire. Its agitated, irregular lines started out black on the burning pages. Susan, who was sitting on the velvet curb, turned away her face that she might not read.
Lady Henrietta, frail but indomitable, throned upon her sofa, eyed her son jealously.
"How did she know so quickly?" she asked.
"She heard it from somebody, I suppose," said Barnaby. "Why, mother, do you imagine a real live ghost can visit Leicestershire without the whole county hearing? ... She wants me to go over and show myself."
"You're not going?"—her tone was sharp.
"No," he said. "I'll tell her I am under contract to exhibit myself exclusively at a music-hall.—And besides, I have to run up to London. I want to give old Dawson the fright he deserves. He must have been in a frantic hurry to wipe me out of his books. What on earth made you choose him to hunt for me?"
"Take Susan with you," said Lady Henrietta. "Go with him, my child, and don't let him out of your sight."
"I don't think she would like it," said Barnaby, doubtfully, but his mother was not to be gainsaid. It was almost as if the mention of Julia had revived a vague apprehension in her, as if she were afraid to let him go by himself. He submitted, laughing.
"Well," he said, "if you'll lend her your fur coat I'll wrap her in that and take her. We'll go up in the morning and come down at five;—and she can amuse herself getting clothes."
He bent down to Susan.
"If you don't mind," he said, half in a whisper; his tone was apologetic. "I think you had better come."
And so they went up together.
In the train he supplied her with an armful of picture papers, and she studied them gravely, hidden from him behind their outstretched pages, till they reached London, when she had to put down her screen. Once only he interrupted her.
"Look at that," he said.
The train was swinging on, making up time between Kettering and Luton; the letters danced as he held out his open newspaper, with a finger on the place. Its heading stared at her—"A LEICESTERSHIRE ROMANCE."
"That," said Barnaby, and his eyes twinkled—he had put away seriousness—"is all about you and me."
She did not see any more pictures after that, only bits of what she had read before he took back his paper and, turning over the crackling sheet, settled into his corner. Whatever she tried to look at, she saw only the printed column proclaiming the dramatic return of a well-known sportsman supposed to be dead; and at the bottom, where his thumb had pressed the paper, a touching reference to the subject's beautiful American wife....
At St. Pancras he put her carefully into a hansom and got in beside her.
"Now," he said, "this is our dress rehearsal. First, we must see about your theatrical wardrobe; that's the expression, isn't it? I'm going to take you to the woman my mother goes to, and while she is rigging you out I'll cut away to my lawyers, and see my own tailor; and then I shall fetch you and we'll have lunch. We shall have to get accustomed to each other."
Driving through the streets with him was curiously exhilarating. Perhaps her spirit was responsive to a reaction. After all, she was young.... If Barnaby knew, and did not condemn her, might she not for a short while dare to be light-hearted—leave the weight of it on his shoulders?
London had become a city of enchantment. She had passed through in the care of Lady Henrietta's messenger, at the end of her journey over the sea; and then she had felt tired and frightened, and she had looked listlessly out of the cab windows, thinking that if Fate betrayed her, she might find herself wandering friendless in these very streets. Now the dark ways were gilded....
"Here we are," said Barnaby, jumping out. "Mélisande. She's a great friend of ours, but she ruined herself racing, and started the shop as a different kind of gamble. Let's go up."
In the show-room upstairs two or three haughty ladies were trailing up and down, on view. The customers were not allowed to touch them; these sat round the room on the sun-faded yellow cushions, gazing at the models as if they were made of wax.
"Mélisande is uncommonly sharp," said Barnaby. He had walked in boldly and given his name to the presiding genius, who had simply glanced and vanished. "Do you see these creatures sweeping to and fro?"
"Yes," said the girl. "Poor things; they look very cross. I suppose they are dreadfully ill paid?"
Barnaby smothered an irreverent laugh.
"Paid?" he said. "Not a farthing. She introduces them in the season, and, in return, they have to act as dummies. They hate it; but she knows how to drive a bargain. It's a fine advertisement. Half the world comes to stare at the beauties—it's funnier than a picture gallery. And, of course, the pull of being taken up by Mélisande in her society capacity is enormous."
"Who are they?" asked Susan, puzzled.
"Oh, heiresses, of sorts, They used to be whisked away in their own motors at six o'clock. I daresay they are still," said Barnaby. "Here she is."
An inner door flew open, and a stout woman with dark hair and clever, tired eyes, artistically blacked, appeared. She ran up to Barnaby and shook him, then let him go, and inspected him at all angles, with her head on one side as if he were a Paris model.
"Barnaby!" she screamed. "It is really Barnaby. You lunatic, I thought you were dead and buried."
"They all thought that," said Barnaby. "It's a bit rough on me."
"Let me pinch you again!" she said. "I can't have you in here if you're not alive. It's against all my rules, and customers are so timid. Of course, as a ghost you might be very useful. Make the brutes pay up!"
"What an eye to business!" he said, enduring her inspection.
"My dear man, I am in the workhouse! My friends insist on patronizing me, and ordering all kinds of magnificence, and then they go away imagining they have done me a kindness. I never dine out without meeting at least one frock that's a bad debt, and you can't be brilliant when you are being eclipsed by a wretch opposite out of your own pocket. But what do you want? I can't come out to lunch. I am rushed to death. There's an awful old Russian princess in there I can't get rid of. She says she wants to learn the trade, and I daren't leave her with my designs. I can't make out whether she's only a Nihilist or a kleptomaniac."
"I want to put my wife in your hands," said Barnaby. "I'll come for her at two. Can you burn all that crape, and dress her in something sensible?"
Mélisande screamed again, fixing her eyes for the first time on Susan.
"Is it a joke," she said, "or have you been playing fast and loose with other people?"
"I don't know what you mean," said Barnaby, but his eyes hardened. She glanced at his face, subduing her voice a little.
"I have never been paid," she said, "for an outfit of the most expensive mourning. The day after we read of your—departure in the papers, Julia Kelly came in here and asked what was the proper thing to wear when you lost your—love. I told her it varied. If the man hadn't proposed black would look like an affectation. I suggested mauve as harmlessly sentimental. And she said, 'But if he were practically your husband?' and I said, of course, practically widow's mourning, but not a cap. And she wore it...."
He moved restlessly under her detaining hand on his sleeve. "I'm betraying no confidences," she said. "It's a matter of common knowledge.—How long, in the name of goodness, have you been married? Who is she?"
"Two or three years," he said. She was still holding on to his coat.
"Wait," she said. "Wait. Oh, you are as mad as ever. How do you want her dressed? She looks awfully young, poor child."
But Barnaby had made his escape.